In recent years, paste compositions formed by dispersing inorganic fine particles such as conductive powder, ceramic powder and the like in a binder resin are employed in order to obtain sintered, bodies having various shapes. Particularly, a paste composition formed by dispersing a phosphor as fine particles in a resin binder is used, for example, in plasma displays (PDP), field emission displays (FED, SED), and the like, and in recent years, its demand is being increased. Also in the case of a paste composition formed by dispersing glass frits in a resin binder, a resin for a lead-free frit glass, which does not impair conventional handling and has a lower decomposition temperature than that of a resin for a conventional lead frit glass, is being required. Moreover, demands for uses of conductive paste for wiring, which uses a silver powder having a low sintering temperature, is growingly increased.
As the binder resin used for such an inorganic fine particle dispersed paste composition, a cellulose type resin such as ethyl cellulose from which a paste excellent in a screen printing property can be obtained is commonly employed. However, when considering a process in which inorganic fine particles are dispersed, a pattern is printed by screen printing, and degreasing and burning are performed to obtain an inorganic fine particle layer, since cellulose type resins have poor thermal decomposition properties, they have to be degreased at elevated temperatures and therefore they have problems that large energy is required in a production step or it takes much time to burn. Furthermore, when a cellulose type resin is used as a binder resin of a paste in which glass frits are dispersed, there is a problem that a carbon derived from a resin remains in a sintered body since in the step of sintering glass frits, sintering of the glass frit starts before the resin is decomposed and removed.
For this problem, in Patent Document 1, a paste composition obtained by using an acrylic resin having excellent thermal decomposition properties is disclosed. An inorganic fine particle dispersed paste composition containing such an acrylic resin can be burnt at low temperatures in a short time since its binder resin has good thermal decomposition properties.
However, even in such a case, when low melting point glasses having a softening point of 400° C. or lower or inorganic fine particles such as conductive fine particles of copper or silver, which are prone to being oxidized by sintering, are used, decomposition at lower temperatures is required.    Patent Document 1: Japanese Kokai Publication Hei-11-71132 (JP-A H11-71132)